Letters to the Editor
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Babies and sex
Well, as a male and father of several children, my wife was ready, willing, and able for more sex than I was after childbirth. I kind of saw her as the mother/madonna, not the horny babe she had always been. Other than the milk leakage/explosions everything worked fine. My (limited) experience with mothers and non-mothers is that motherhood makes women far more sexual. Since it appears to make women more intelligent and better athletes also, that stands to reason. So women who choose not to have children are giving up being smarter, stronger, and having better sex. Pretty dumb tradeoff.
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Ummm, the country is in crisis, and this is what Salon puts on the front page?
Seriously. In a time of political, environmental, social, and religious crisis such as the one we are living in now, the role of the independent news media, such as Salon, should be to expose the hypocrisy, to call for reform, to keep a record of the wrongs committed by the ruling party. When life is good and things are fine, we can happily read fluffy articles about sex after baby. When life is anything but good, we expect something more from our news sources. This is not the time for fluff.
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Jeez, 565656565656...
...Lighten up. I, for one, refuse to stop living my life. Go ahead, keep telling yourself life is "anything but good".
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Like they say
Salon's always been a mix of the personal and the political. The country's in a crisis, and the ecological balance of the world is quickly tipping over, and I appreciate every word Salon devotes to that.
But, you know, people grappling with a feeling of personal failure aren't likely to get much done in the real world, either. I don't have kids or, currently, much of a sex life for putative kids to destroy. But it seems to me useful for women and men planning to have kids to hear from someone who's been there, was surprised and shaken at an unanticipated consequence, and survived, good as ever, with good humor.
No harm and obvious upside. Feminists used to say the personal is the political, remember? (And without naming names, there are Salon pieces I've grimaced at too. But not this one.)
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Oh the horror
I could relate to some of this letter (the post-partum stuff) and not to some (the Kama Sutra, conquer-the-world-of-sex stuff), but here's what it made me think of: It's not bad to read this kind of work because it gives people insight into a part of life with which they might not yet (or ever) be personally familiar. And that's a big reason why we read other people's writing - we find out about stuff we might not of known before.
My own post-partum revelation, which came as a complete surprise, was that all the families I knew (mainly orthodox religious) who had a series of kids all born less than or around a year apart were created by having sex while the mother was still 'post-partum' from the last birth. And I just thought, OUCH! But then, that was my own personal reaction.
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I thought it was a fine article...
I'm a 52 year old man. married since 1979, with one child born in 1981.
I thought the article was well-written and interesting. She seemed to be telling her own subjective truth about how giving birth affected her sex life.
It's hard to get a woman to tell the truth about most things, least of all sex, so I appreciate the chance to learn more about the human condition.
I agree with some who posted that these are troubled times. but one can not spend all one's time keeping up with the devolution of our country, it's too depressing.
Uncle Al
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Not good enough for the lead
Any piece can be worth reading if it's particularly well-written. This one isn't. Why it's the Salon lead, I haven't a clue. It doesn't present anything new, and reads like a snippet from a rather pedestrian journal.
While I have zero interest in kid/parenthood pieces, or most sex pieces, many seem to. It appears that there is no escape these days; one used to be able to avoid them by staying out of certain sections. How quaint, yes? Well, I'll just skip 'em; no need to suggest it.
*Yes, I bore a child. No, I didn't expect strangers to find that fact, or its product,
or my resultant run of the mill physical or emotional travails compelling - or even worth hearing about.
(Hopefully this disclaimer will satisfy parents who automatically assume that I lack interest and patience only because I haven't experienced the "overwhelming joy of breeding". Moreover, expecting society to put up with rampant, uncontrolled, ill-behaved Snotleighs and their fawning, selfish, clueless parents because of our future elderliness is absurd - my folks would have laughed out loud at the idiocy of such a feeble excuse for a parent's inadequacy.)
It surprised me that the writer was so determined to have sex when her body obviously wasn't up to tolerating, let alone enjoying it yet. Presumably the answer is her previous (boring) sexual prowess, and a desire to reclaim her Kama Sutra crown.
Bad idea. I'm glad that you worked things out.
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Realistically, this is exactly why men with position and money
have prenuptial agreements and prefer young, hot women. Sorry, but no sympathy. What are we supposed to do? Cuddle, make you feel better? No, if you can't help yourself and your psyche don't expect us to We, as men, don't need that in our life. Next. I don't even know why this is news. Put it in your "blog" and stop wasting precious space where real news should be.
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To gonnabechef..
In my "broad stroke" I was actually responding to another commenter who said that perhaps this story should have been on Broadsheet, and maybe then it would have avoided some of the vitriol. I was only saying that, from my experience reading Broadsheet, that wouldn't have been the case. I agree that others are entitled to their opinions, too. I was only commenting on the fact that so many men choose that site to express their anger towards women.
But your comment sent me back to re-read my own, and I discovered that I had (in the wee hours) edited out another sentence or two about how refreshing it was, in this case, to read so many letters from male readers who "got" it. It being an appreciation for Williams' experience. I think I deleted that part because it was in a paragraph where I thought I went too far in complaining about Salon's readers (something I never did before they implemented this comments feature), and I really wanted my response to focus more on the story.
I'll have to be more judicious about my editing choices in the future. Thanks for calling my attention to it.